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SADC'S regional security arrangements
Pambazuka News 154
April 29, 2004

By Laurie Nathan

Laurie Nathan is a Visiting Fellow at the Crisis States Programme, London School of Economics.

In 1992 the Southern African Development Community (SADC) was established as a regional organisation with a mandate to promote economic integration, poverty alleviation, peace, security and the evolution of common political values and institutions.

There were great expectations that the demise of apartheid and the Cold War would usher in a period of sustained stability and development at national and regional levels. Yet over the following decade SADC region remained wracked by a high level of conflict that included civil wars in the DRC and Angola, as well as violence and state repression in other countries.

SADC was largely ineffectual in these situations, distinguished less by its peacemaking efforts than by its fractious internal quarrels. The formation of SADC Organ on Politics, Defence and Security - a common security forum whose stipulated functions include the prevention and resolution of conflict - was itself bedevilled by acrimonious disputes among member states over a ten-year period. In this commentary I address three questions:

• What accounts for the difficulty in establishing the Organ?
• What are the reasons for SADC's poor record of peacemaking?
• And why was the analysis and prognosis of many academics and activists so flawed in the early 1990s?

Many analysts attribute the difficulty in establishing the Organ to disagreements over its status and structure or to competition and animosity between South Africa and Zimbabwe. These diagnoses are superficial and incomplete.

Three more substantial problems have prevented SADC from creating an effective security forum. First and most importantly, there is an absence of common values among member states. There are two key lines of division: between democratic and authoritarian tendencies in the domestic policies of states, and between pacific and militarist orientations in their foreign policies.

As in the case of Europe, a viable regional organisation with a political and security mandate can institutionalise the common values of its members, develop common policies and contribute to peace and stability. However, the viability of such organisations depends in the first instance on the existence of common values.

In the absence of sufficient normative congruence, states are unable to resolve or transcend their major disputes, achieve cohesion and act with common purpose in crisis situations. In the realm of political governance, there are many de jure democracies whose executives are intolerant of dissent, hardly accountable to parliament and insufficiently committed to respect for human rights and the rule of law.

According to Jonathan Moyo prior to becoming Zimbabwe's Minister of Information, "the assertion that the majority of African governments are now democratic… has no empirical basis. It is true that multiparty elections are now common in Africa but this truth does not describe a fundamental development. The change is strategic, not substantive. …Just look at Zambia and Malawi since the fall of Kenneth Kaunda and the late Kamuzu Banda. Zimbabwe is following suit with reckless abandon".

In 1993 SADC's Framework and Strategy document, prepared by the SADC Secretariat, called for the forging of common political values based on democratic norms, the creation of a "non-militaristic security order" and the establishment of mechanisms for conflict avoidance, management and resolution.

The document highlighted the need to address non-military sources of conflict and threats to human security, such as underdevelopment and abuse of human rights. The proposed strategies and mechanisms included a forum for mediation and arbitration; the ratification by states of key principles of international law; a non-aggression treaty and non-offensive defence doctrines; democratic civil-military relations; and reductions in military force levels and spending.

Many states did not support this anti-militarist agenda, however. Progress towards establishing a security forum was delayed over the next seven years by antagonistic and recriminatory debates around the Organ's status and structure as manifestations of underlying political and strategic differences among member states.

The second reason for the difficulty in operationalising the Organ lies in the reluctance of SADC states to surrender a measure of sovereignty to a security body that encompasses binding rules and decision-making in the sphere of high politics and the possibility of interference in domestic affairs. This reluctance derives from the political weakness of states and the absence of common values, mutual trust and a shared vision of the security body.

Third, Southern Africa is characterised by small economies, underdevelopment and weak administrative capacity, which undermine the efficiency and effectiveness of all the SADC's multilateral forums and programmes. Ten years after its formation, SADC estimated that only twenty per cent of its 470 projects met the criteria for properly integrated regional projects, the rest being essentially national projects.

In addition to its inability to prevent violent conflict, SADC does not have a record of successful peacemaking. In many intra-state conflicts it has refrained from critical comment and diplomatic engagement, treating violence and crises in governance as purely domestic affairs.

In the case of state repression and abrogation of the rule of law in Zimbabwe, on the other hand, SADC has repeatedly expressed solidarity with the government.

There are several reasons for these responses. First, SADC states are keen to avoid adversarial relations that might jeopardise regional trade and functional co-operation. Second, governments that are not fully democratic are naturally unwilling to speak out against neighbouring countries that engage in undemocratic practices. Third, Southern African states are determined to maintain a posture of unity and solidarity.

Forged in the heat of the struggles against colonialism and apartheid, this posture militates against public criticism of each other. The imperative of solidarity is greatest when foreign powers raise concerns that are perceived or can be portrayed as reflecting a 'neo-colonial' agenda. Solidarity of this kind enhances regime security at the expense of human security, masks rather than transcends the substantive disputes between states, and does not constitute a foundation for a common security forum.

Fourth, SADC's poor record of peacemaking is due to the impasse around the Organ. The absence of an agreed set of norms, strategies and procedures for addressing high-intensity conflict has contributed to collective inertia, divergent and parochial approaches by individual states, ill-conceived interventions of doubtful legality, and a confused mixture of peacemaking and peace enforcement.

Most of these problems were evident in SADC's response to the crises in Lesotho and the DRC in 1998. The dispute between member states around the DRC crisis crippled the Organ and gave rise to the notion of "two SADCs", with two camps pursuing contradictory pacific and militarist strategies.

In the early and mid-1990s a number of academics and activists were involved in efforts to establish a common security forum and were optimistic about its prospects. What mistakes did we make? The reasons might offer insights into future activities and policy recommendations.

First, we based our models of common security on the European experience without analysing adequately the nature of our own region and of its states in particular. We were strong on ideas and norms but weak on analysis. Second, we relied too much on the compelling need for a common security body and paid too little attention to the requirements for its success. Third, we overestimated the durability of the political bonds forged during the liberation struggles and underestimated the significance of the political differences between states.

Many analysts continue to make this mistake, arguing that the Organ breakdown can be overcome by states forging a political consensus on human security, democracy and respect for human rights. If states do not support these norms and values at the national level, however, they will not support them at the regional level. Regional policy on security is a product of national policies on security.

Fourth, we were preoccupied (as many analysts still are) with the architecture of security arrangements when the critical issues in fact lie elsewhere: structure follows strategy; strategy follows objectives; objectives are shaped as much by values as by interests; and the Organ breakdown has occurred at the level of foundational values.

In general, we overstated what was possible at the regional level and understated what was required at the national level. Where democracy and human security do not exist, they are most likely to be attained through broad-based popular struggles.

This article first appeared in Pambazuka News, an electronic newsletter for social justice in Africa, www.pambazuka.org.

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